slickhog.com

Personally, I was never interested in either reading or writing comments on any blog. They could not exist and I wouldn’t feel the difference. As one of my sites grew, I had to make the jump from static html to a dynamic content site. I chose WordPress. Being new to WP, I knew very little on how to customize it. Since Comments come with WP as a default, I kept them, thinking that they can’t do much harm, because nobody will leave any comments, anyway.

I couldn’t be more wrong! Comments started pouring in immediately. My site was set up to hold the comments until they’re approved by the administrator. After a few days, I decided to allow for the comments to appear on the posts immediately. I did that for two reasons: 1) when visitors post comments, they expect them to appear immediately, if they won’t be satisfied with the site, they won’t come back 2) approving comments was tedious and took too much of my time

Unfortunately, as soon as I allowed for instant posting of comments, spammers began dumping their garbage into my site. Somebody recommended that we use Akismet plugin to stay clean of spam. It works great. Out of over 600 legitimate comments and a few thousand spam comments left in March, Akismet missed only one or two. It also mistakenly placed one legitimate comment into the trash. I’m very impressed by the work the guys at Akismet did. If you have comments on your blog, you need Akismet.

Do comments help generate traffic?

Absolutely! Before I introduced comments to my site, my return visitors accounted for roughly 3% of daily traffic. Four months after I introduced comments, my return visitors make up 14-15% of monthly traffic. I realize that my increased return-visitor base may also be caused by the fact that the site has been up for a while and some people who stumbled upon the site, liked it and are now coming back. But, since the site now gets 50 comments per day and some of them come from the same individuals, I have to assume that comments help generate traffic.

Can comments hurt my blog?

Sure, some people will post nasty comments simply because they can. Others may point out information about your post that may be damaging to your credibility. If this happens, see what you did wrong, correct it and forget it. In more serious situations, try to contact the person who left the negative-comment and discuss the issue with them. This will help repair your credibility in the eyes of the visitor. Otherwise, they may not come back to your site ever again.